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Start with the Wiki article. Its certainly 'not all rubbish' but I've heard some weird stories about 40 dead buddhist monks in SS uniforms wearing green gloves in Berlin etc that I'd take with a big pinch of salt.

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Had an interesting experience while reading Trevor Ravenscroft's Spear of Destiny. The spear was supposedly the one the Roman soldier Longinus pierced the side of Christ with. Apparently the SS wanted it for Hitler because it was rumored whomever possessed it would become extremely powerful. Not sure if the spear was the real deal or not, but maybe some in the Nazi hierarchy believed it. I won't go into what happened to me while reading that book while in the service, but needless to say, I quickly gave it back to its owner who soon experienced the same strange thing. And I'm not one who believes in all that magical hocus-pocus crap. There are tons of books out there on the Nazis and the Occult, which are interesting to read, but probably close to 99% BS.

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The Holy Roman Emperors had a lance of their own, attested from the time of Otto I (912-973). In 1000 Otto III gave Boleslaw I of Poland a replica of the Lance at the Congress of Gniezno. In 1084 Henry IV had a silver band with the inscription "Nail of Our Lord" added to it. This was based on the belief that this was the lance of Constantine the Great which enshrined a nail used for the Crucifixion. In 1273 it was first used in the coronation ceremony. Around 1350 Charles IV had a golden sleeve put over the silver one, inscribed "Lancea et clavus Domini" (Lance and nail of the Lord). In 1424 Sigismund had a collection of relics, including the lance, moved from his capital in Prague to his birth place, Nuremberg, and decreed them to be kept there forever. This collection was called the Reichskleinodien or Imperial Regalia.

When the French Revolutionary army approached Nuremberg in the spring of 1796 the city councilors decided to remove the Reichskleinodien to Vienna for safe keeping. The collection was entrusted to one "Baron von Hügel", who promised to return the objects as soon as peace had been restored and the safety of the collection assured[citation needed]. However, the Holy Roman Empire was officially dissolved in 1806 and von Hügel took advantage of the confusion over who was the rightful owner and sold the entire collection, including the lance, to the Habsburgs[citation needed]. When the city councilors discovered this they asked for the Reichskleinodien back but were refused. As part of the imperial regalia it was kept in the Schatzkammer (Imperial treasury) in Vienna and was known as the lance of Saint Maurice.

During the Anschluss, when Austria was annexed to Germany, Adolf Hitler took the lance. It was returned to Austria by American General George S. Patton after World War II and was temporarily stored in the Kunsthistorisches Museum. Currently the Spear is held in the Schatzkammer (Imperial treasury).

Dr. Robert Feather, an English metallurgist and technical engineering writer, tested the lance in January 2003.[8] He was given unprecedented permission not only to examine the lance in a laboratory environment, but was also allowed to remove the delicate bands of gold and silver that hold it together. In the opinion of Feather and other academic experts, the likeliest date of the spearhead is the 7th century A.D. - only slightly earlier than the Museum's own estimate. However, Dr. Feather also stated in the same documentary that an iron pin - long claimed to be a nail from the crucifixion, hammered into the blade and set off by tiny brass crosses - is "consistent" in length and shape with a 1st century A.D. Roman nail. According to Paul the Deacon the Lombard royal line bore the name of the Gungingi,[9] which Karl Hauck[10] and Stefano Gasparri[11] maintain identified them with the name of Odin’s lance, Gungnir (a sign that they probably claimed descent from Odin, as did most of the Germanic royal lines) Paul the Deacon also notes[12] that the inauguration rite of a Lombard king considered essentially in his grasping of a sacred/royal lance. Milan, which had been the capital of the Western Roman Empire in the time of Constantine, was also the capital of the Lombard kings Perctarit and his son Cunipert, who became Catholic Christians in the 7th century. Thus it seems possible that the iron point of the Lombardic royal lance might have been recast in the 7th century in order to enshrine one of the 1st century Roman nails that St. Helena was reputed to have found at Calvary and brought to Milan, thus giving a new Christian sacred aura to the old pagan royal lance. If Charlemagne’s inauguration as the King of the Lombards in 774 had likewise included his grasping of this now-Christianized sacred/royal lance, this would explain how it would have eventually become the oldest item in the German imperial regalia. We might also note that the Iron Crown of Lombardy (dated to the 8th century), which eventually became the primary symbol of Lombardic kingship, takes its name from the tradition that it also contains one of the holy nails. Alternately, since Gregory of Tours in his Libri Historiarum VII, 33, states that in 585 the Merovingian king Guntram designated his nephew Childebert II his heir by handing him his lance, it is possible that a royal lance was also a symbol of kingship among the Merovingian kings and that a nail from Calvary was in the 7th century incorporated into this royal lance and thus eventually would have come into the German imperial regalia.

Peter, that is interesting! I was unaware that any tests had been conducted upon the spear. I had read the book with a high level of skepticism and had pretty much thought the whole affair a bunch of BS!

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There's no shortage of Roman nails.... when I was a kid I dug up a Roman coin in my parents back garden (we lived on a street called 'Roman Road' that followed the line of Antonines wall in Scotland). Excavate any roman military site and you'll dig them up. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonine_Wall Antonines wall is the one everyone forgets, but there was a big chunk of it and a very well preserved Roman bathhouse just up the road.

What is unusual is that a genuine roman nail was incorporated into the spear. Common sense says the odds of it actually being used to crucify jesus are lottery odds small but its unusual for a medieval fake to be this accurate. Normally they'd have just used a 10 year old nail if they wanted to con someone into buying a relic..... its an interesting object.

Actually we take this sort of thing for granted and we really shouldn't... we're a small country with a very long history so ancient objects are all over the place. 1000 year old buildings seem fairly normal here.

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That sounds like an exciting thing to happen for any child! I can't imagine finding a Roman coin in my backyard as a kid. I guess the closest I could have come to something so interesting would be finding a Civil War button or a Revolutionary War coin or something like that (although I grew up in Michigan, so the chances of even that happening were slim). I've always envied England's long and distinguished history.

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Just as well I found it- my parents went beserk when they saw my excavations! I think they've still got the coin- I'm visiting in a few weeks so I might look for it. Its not worth much- about £20 in modern money, but its a nice story to tell.

This was about 500 yards up the road:http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.u...ths/index.html
They discovered this huge roman bath house when building the apartment buildings behind it. Fortunately the developers were made to change their plans and the bath house is preserved.

A lot of people don't realise how far into Scotland the Romans went. They must have really settled down to build like that.